News

There is Only One Pirate

August 7, 2019

For the 2019 GMTK Game Jam, a couple of friends and I produced Greedy Pirates: a short whimsical puzzley platformer revolving around the idea that there is "only one" pirate.

By the completion of development, this concept has manifested itself in two distinct ways:

You control all of the pirates with one set of controls.
Only one of the pirates can win each level.

You can download the game from our website or play it directly in the browser from the Greedy Pirates game page. (It's free.)

Flash Into Action

July 5, 2018

Obligations have cleared up recently in a significant way to allow development on Maven. We're looking at having something new presentable by the time CGDC rolls around.

In the meantime, check out this trippy shot of soldiers with Flash-like symptoms in the middle of some timing refactors.

Better Weather

September 12, 2015

Did I ever show off the new weather graphics from Freedan Studios?

In the real world, when one person is standing in front of another, you see the front person and not so much of the one behind. In a game world, it is a little bit difficult to ensure that interacting objects display to show accurately who is "in front." Let me show you what I am talking about.

If we choose to not think about layering, we may easily end up drawing sprites in random order, with the effect that one sprite may look like it is walking on another sprite's head.

Hiccups Hath Occurred

August 3, 2015

I do not want to be writing this post. Unfortunately, The Designer and I were mistaken to give a release date of August 6 for the demo. Being new to game design, we are still figuring out how long goals will take to reach. Ironically, though I made a blog post concerning time management just last week, The Designer and I are still working on our own. We hope that you will nevertheless continue to follow our progress for the day on which the demo actually releases. In the meantime, here is one of the sprites that you will find in the map:

Thanks for reading,
~ Freedan

Pre-Production!

June 23, 2015

The longer one works with digital media, the more one realizes just how necessary planning is. For Maven maps, this is especially true. After creating the first section of a larger map (The garrison, which I showed in an earlier post), I decided to draw a simple map of the next section: The marketplace.

This section is designed to evoke the crowded feel of a chaotic marketplace while also being simple to navigate. To the left and right of the market will be living areas, and above it will be the garrison, whose soldiers guard the market from potential thieves. In the game, characters will also hopefully be able to obtain food and armor from market stalls. I hope to create a more immersive environment by including different areas in this map like this rather than just slapping a bunch of tents onto it.

Next up: Actual graphics for the marketplace! For now, here's my quick concept sketch. The Garrison paper is just a list of object markers so that I know where my garrison objects are in the editor.

Enjoy!
~Freedan

A Merging of Elements

June 1, 2015

Hello! I'm the creator of Freedan Studios, and lead (Well, sole) artist for Maven. I'll be contributing to the blog for a while, as Solovid's founder and lead blogger (He would prefer to remain anonymous, so I'll just call him "The Designer") is busy with an internship this summer. So basically there will be more graphics - related posts for the next few weeks.

One of the most exciting events graphics - wise is the development of the first fully customized map for Maven! The Designer wrote a browser - based level creator which has made level design quite a bit more straightforward than it would otherwise have been. One of the best things about using the level creator is that I can see how all of the visuals in the game will work together as I'm placing them on the map. Until recently everything has been isolated ... tents were separated into their own individual sprite sheets, backgrounds were just single images, etc. Now they are all coming together to form a whole image, be it an outpost or a merchant's camp. Here's a small taste of the first map. I will be making changes to the doorway (E.g. the grass should cover the bottom of it) and adding additional props to make the scene more interesting, but I think this will give you an idea of what levels will be like visually.

Hope you like it!
~Freedan

P.S. I will post an update later this week showing an improved version of this scene.

New Art

April 26, 2015

vs.

Level Editor

April 14, 2015

The Maven engine (for lack of a better name) now has a a companion level editor. This is a shot of what development might look like (i.e. this isn't actually a real level setup, but it does demonstrate the editor). Our goal is to put out a new demo soon; so be on the look-out for some of these familiar sights!

Tents

March 29, 2015

Did you hear about the work Freedan Studios has been doing? It's pretty in-tents.

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